Page 7 of Blood Marked

Selene looked up through a curtain of raven hair, breath ragged, chest heaving.

Kael was staring at her—no longer icy. No longer indifferent.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Or a prophecy come to life.

She clutched her hand to her chest, the blood still dripping. Her mark throbbed beneath her tunic like a second heartbeat.

“What the hell…” she whispered. “What did youdoto me?”

Kael’s voice came slow and hoarse, like he’d swallowed fire.

“I didn’t do a damn thing.”

The priest finally found words, whispering them like a curse. “The Blood Mark… it has chosen.”

Selene’s head spun.

Kael turned away, rising to his feet with effort. His back was rigid, his breath still sharp.

“You will be taken to your quarters,” the priest said to her. “Until the court decides what this means.”

“I know what it means,” Selene muttered, half to herself. “It means I just became their favorite damn puppet.”

Kael didn’t look at her again. He walked away like he couldn’t bear it.

And for some reason, that hurt more than anything.

FOUR

KAEL

The burning didn’t stop.

It crawled under Kael’s skin like wildfire—raw, electric, wrong. He’d felt pain before. Bone breaks. Blade wounds. The kind of agony that tore flesh and pride in equal measure. But this?

This was something else entirely.

He shoved through the knot of stunned courtiers, ignoring the whispers and the gaping stares as if they were ghosts. His boots hit stone like hammer falls. He barely registered the scent of old incense, or the clang of ceremonial bells still echoing from the priest’s tower.

The Bond had taken hold.

The Mark had chosen.

And it had chosenher.

Kael clenched his fists as he stormed into the empty corridor behind the ritual grounds. His breath came hard, shoulders twitching with the need toshift, to run, to tear something apart with his own hands.

The image of her hit him like a punch to the gut—pale skin gone luminous under the moons, blood streaming down herhand, hair a black waterfall over her shoulders as her eyes found his in the middle of all that light.

And the mark, glowing like fire carved into her chest. He’d felt it brand intohisskin too, like the stone had reached into his soul and slammed the door shut behind it.

He could feel her now. Not just the scent of her, not just her heartbeat when she was close. Inside. A thread pulled taut between them. Every breath she took tugged at something deep and primal in him. Every emotion flickered like heat under his ribs—confusion, fear, fury, even that sharp spike of defiance she wore like armor.

Kael slammed his fist into the stone wall, skin splitting open on impact. The pain helped. A little.

Footsteps echoed behind him. Not hurried. Not afraid.

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